


Interlude

by NyeLew



Series: Turretverse [5]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:13:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyeLew/pseuds/NyeLew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the M7G-677 Massacre, nobody is quite sure what to do. So, with a month of enforced downtime, AR-1 and the rest of the Expedition takes time out to pursue their own projects and heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude

Elizabeth had suspended off-world missions for a month in the aftermath of the fiasco on M7G-677. John couldn’t blame her. It was a fuck up of massive proportions, and everyone had been on age after it. The addition of the kids to the Expedition was—difficult. It put extra strain on all their resources, and some of the scientists had suspended their research to set up a school on the mainland.

John knew McKay and Zelenka had collaborated on tweaking the Machine systems to serve as teachers – so the kids could learn math, how to write in English and basic skills that would make them marginally more useful to the Expedition.

He hadn’t spoken to McKay for a week after they’d got back. John had been fucked – he’d sustained several injuries and the nanites had gone to town on his body, drawing on fat and other reserves to try to fix the damage.

He figured McKay would be busy studying the Wraith stunners he’d appropriated anyway, and he was just too—angry, frustrated to talk with him. Beckett had been delighted with the Wraith he’d brought in; John was just disappointed he hadn’t managed a live one.

Rather than dwell on their fuck ups, John had convinced Elizabeth to divert resources to developing the alpha site. Up to now it’d been a few field tents with minimal defensive equipment – John wanted to install the Mega Turret and an underground defensive facility. They could move the gate. Make it safe from Wraith attack, maybe.

So he was stuck on M1X-522 overseeing the construction of the new site. They had a bunch of engineers with them, and Athosians willing to contribute their manpower to the operation. It was good, honest hard work and it had actually lifted his spirits—they could atone for their sins in Pegasus by maintaining a strong base of operations from which to attack the Wraith.

Teyla was notably absent. She’d taken off the mainland when Elizabeth announced there would be no off-world missions for the month; he hoped she’d come back.

*

Sheppard had brought back some Wraith stunners for him to play with, but Rodney hadn’t been able to find the time. Between helping Zelenka with optimising Machine software for teaching – which was proving difficult, and Zelenka had even started working on a completely new program designed for teaching – he was overseeing Atlantis’s regular  maintenance _and_ trying to look over the plans for the alpha site.

Luckily, one of the military types had a civil engineering major (who knew?) because that freed up a lot of his time. Except now, without off-world missions, he seemed to have way too much. It was made more apparent by several absences – Ford and Teyla off on the mainland, and Sheppard overseeing alpha site preparations.

He knew it was to give them all some time away from each other to recover after the mess they’d made, but it was a pretty big hole. Carson helped somewhat, but he’d taken to studying the dead Wraith Sheppard had brought back. Apparently he was trying to sequence the Wraith genome – why, Rodney couldn’t guess.

So Rodney was in his lab tinkering with the Wraith stunners. They were interesting bits of equipment, and he’d been pleased to see the technology was highly reminiscent of Ancient tech – which he supposed made sense, if the Wraith had learnt anything from their war with the Ancients.

It didn’t take him long to figure out how they worked, and within a couple of hours he had one of them disassembled on his bench. He reasoned that he could probably back engineer them with the tools, although since they were sorely lacking in control crystals and components, that knowledge was basically useless.

What they needed was someone with industrial capabilities – they had some tools with them, but he’d settle for an early 20th century world. He sighed and started putting the Wraith stunner back together.

*

This was the work he’d wanted to do in Atlantis, reflected Carson. He enjoyed the work of being a doctor, of course – caring for his patients, talking with them, fixing their medical issues – but at heart he was a geneticist, and the lack of off-world missions of late meant that he had time to get stuck into his true passions.

Which was why since Major Sheppard had brought him the Wraith, he’d been working flat-out to study its genetics and physical makeup. The dead cells he’d collected had a miraculous capacity to live, and since he figured that out he’d been able to develop a couple of Wraith cell lines for further study. As a species, the he found the Wraith equal parts fascinating and repulsive. He had a number of theories as to their origin, but the most intriguing thing about them was that their DNA was like a strange mixture of Human and Iratus bug.

One of the first things he’d done was try to locate the region of WTA, but then he’d realised that to do that properly, he’d have to sequence the genome. And he wanted to make a chromosome map. He made several requests to the Ancient database data miners to look for all information related to Wraith biology (effectively updating his previous request to ‘urgent’), but until they produced results he was doing it the good old fashioned way.

Which was to say, the hideously futuristic way; he’d uncovered some Ancient equipment in the medical bay that would make his life much, much easier – and would allow him to create a genetic database spanning two whole galaxies, if the Athosians and the wee children from M7G-677 added to it.

All the little adaptations to Pegasus, the huge array of new alleles and gene clusters to play with – Carson was sure he’d made the right choice in joining the Expedition, even in light of the troubles they’d had. No opportunity was a golden opportunity, in reality, and if he were back on Earth he might be dead now.

They had no way of knowing, and it was a sobering thought.

*

Teya relished the time away from Atlantis. In the days since the Earthers’ arrival in their galaxy, she had not had much time for rest. She felt disconnected from her people for the first time – their move to the mainland had been upsetting, she realised now. But she had a chance to help them rebuild their home after the cull, now, and she had taken it. She was not entirely disconnected from her team – Aiden had come with her to the mainland, and Rodney was a short distance away in Atlantis.

So Teyla had taken time to talk with her people, to listen to their fears and concerns. She listened when they spoke of the children of M7G-677, and offered assurances that everything would be done to care for them. Many of her people had taken in the younger children – not as replacements for those who had been lost, exactly, but it was an arrangement suitable for those involved. Many of the older children had formed their own village separate from that of the Athosians – and that was their right. They would all help to farm, and all would learn new skills from the teachers of Atlantis, but where they would go at night – that was their own affair.

Teyla hoped their seclusion would not lead to conflict. The planet Lantea appeared to offer a safe haven for refugees of the Wraith, at least in these small numbers; she hoped it would one day become a thriving part of the wider Atlantis community. And that the Wraith would not come in numbers until such time as the Earthers had found weapons with which to fight them. From what she had gathered, that would require ships and power sources.

She had given herself a daunting task. But she was no stranger to adversity, and nor were her people. They could thrive, and they were proving to her every day that the people of Athos had the will to endure, to grow, to survive the Wraith. So Teyla threw herself into learning about the new farming techniques the Earthers brought with them, discussed aspects of town planning with the Expedition scientists, and was given a demonstration of the latest additions to the Machine software that was being used to help teach their children.

She could not say that she had forgotten the events of M7G-677, but she had kept herself busy. She had thrown herself into the task of helping her people, of finding that close connection with them once again. And she had gotten to know the children, too, the refugees from a world that her actions had helped destroy.

She didn’t forget, but she took the time to heal. In Pegasus the Wraith were a fact of life – you moved on or you died.

*

It had been a month since what Elizabeth had started calling the M7G-677 Massacre. She would not hide behind euphemisms – the Wraith had massacred the local population in a cull that had been their fault. She had written it up faithfully in the mission reports.

She worried that she had overextended their resources with the Athosians and now the children – but the plan had always been for Atlantis to exist as a long term, semi-self-sustaining outpost. Just over a period of years rather than months – but Elizabeth could adapt their plans.

They had plans for a staggering number of eventualities, put together by a combination of Elizabeth, Rodney and Colonel Sumner – aided by significant amounts of Machine analysis. Protocol for re-establishing communications with Earth, protocol for establishing contact with alien civilisations (which they hadn’t managed to follow properly once), protocol for declarations of independence… Protocols for the destruction of the city and its technologies, too.

But those were distant eventualities, and Elizabeth had decided it was time to begin off-world operations again. There was a point where caution became fear, and she didn’t want to reach it. The alpha site was nearly complete and the settlement on the mainland required less and less skilled work each day. Radek Zelenka had improved the Machine teachers enough that they could be left alone with minimal interference.

They were ready to establish contact with more Pegasus cultures, now that the alpha site was constructed enough for meetings. Rodney had come to her asking to try to find any civilisations with industrial capability, and Teyla had provided what she thought was a suitable world – AR-1 was to visit it the next day.

Their mistakes wouldn’t cripple them.


End file.
